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CUBA, CASTRO, and the UNITED STATES

or

How One Man With A Cigar

Dominated American Foreign Policy

In 1959, a rebel, Fidel Castro, overthrew the reign of

Fulgencia Batista in Cuba; a small island 90 miles off the

Florida coast. There have been many coups and changes of

government in the world since then. Few if any have had the

effect on Americans and American foreign policy as this one.

In 1952, Sergeant Fulgencia Batista staged a successful

bloodless coup in Cuba .

Batista never really had any cooperation and rarely

garnered much support. His reign was marked by continual

dissension.

After waiting to see if Batista would be seriously opposed,

Washington recognized his government. Batista had already

broken ties with the Soviet Union and became an ally to the

U.S. throughout the cold war. He was continually friendly and

helpful to American business interest. But he failed to bring

democracy to Cuba or secure the broad popular support that

might have legitimized his rape of the 1940 Constitution.

As the people of Cuba grew increasingly dissatisfied with

his gangster style politics, the tiny rebellions that had

sprouted began to grow. Meanwhile the U.S. government was

aware of and shared the distaste for a regime increasingly

nauseating to most public opinion. It became clear that Batista

regime was an odious type of government. It killed its own

citizens, it stifled dissent. (1)

At this time Fidel Castro appeared as leader of the growing

rebellion. Educated in America he was a proponent of the

Marxist-Leninist philosophy. He conducted a brilliant guerilla

campaign from the hills of Cuba against Batista. On January

1959, he prevailed and overthrew the Batista government.

Castro promised to restore democracy in Cuba, a feat

Batista had failed to accomplish. This promise was looked

upon benevolently but watchfully by Washington. Castro was

believed to be too much in the hands of the people to stretch

the rules of politics very far. The U.S. government supported

Castro's coup. It professed to not know about Castro's

Communist leanings. Perhaps this was due to the ramifications

of Senator Joe McCarty's discredited anti-Communist diatribes.

It seemed as if the reciprocal economic interests of the

U.S. and Cuba would exert a stabilizing effect on Cuban

politics. Cuba had been economically bound to find a market for

its #1 crop, sugar. The U.S. had been buying it at prices much

higher than market price. For this it received a guaranteed

flow of sugar. (2)

Early on however developments clouded the hope for peaceful

relations. According to American Ambassador to Cuba, Phillip

Bonsal, "From the very beginning of his rule Castro and his

sycophants bitterly and sweepingly attacked the relations of

the United States government with Batista and his regime".(3)

He accused us of supplying arms to Batista to help overthrow

Castro's revolution and of harboring war criminals for a

resurgence effort against him. For the most part these were

not true: the U.S. put a trade embargo on Batista in 1957

stopping the U.S. shipment of arms to Cuba. (4) However, his

last accusation seems to have been prescient.

With the advent of Castro the history of U.S.- Cuban

relations was subjected to a revision of an intensity and

cynicism which left earlier efforts in the shade. This

downfall took two roads in the eyes of Washington: Castro's

incessant campaign of slander against the U.S. and Castro's

wholesale nationalization of American properties.

These actions and the U.S. reaction to them set the stage

for what was to become the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the end of

U.S.- Cuban relations.

Castro promised the Cuban people that he would bring land

reform to Cuba. When he took power, the bulk of the nations

wealth and land was in the hands of a small minority. The huge

plots of land were to be taken from the monopolistic owners and

distributed evenly among the people. Compensation was to be

paid to the former owners. According to Phillip Bonsal, "

Nothing Castro said, nothing stated in the agrarian reform

statute Castro signed in 1958, and nothing in the law that was

promulgated in the Official Gazzette of June 3, 1959, warranted

the belief that in two years a wholesale conversion of Cuban

agricultural land to state ownership would take place".(5) Such

a notion then would have been inconsistent with many of the

Castro pronouncements, including the theory of a peasant

revolution and the pledges to the landless throughout the

nation. Today most of the people who expected to become

independent farmers or members of cooperatives in the operation

of which they would have had a voice are now laborers on the

state payroll. (6)

After secretly drawing up his Land Reform Law, Castro used

it to form the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA)

with broad and ill defined powers. Through the INRA Castro

methodically seized all American holdings in Cuba. He promised

compensation but frequently never gave it. He conducted

investigations into company affairs, holding control over them

in the meantime, and then never divulging the results or giving

back the control. (7)

These seizures were protested. On January 11 Ambassador

Bonsal delivered a note to Havana protesting the Cuban

government seizure of U.S. citizens property. The note was

rejected the same night as a U.S. attempt to keep economic

control over Cuba. (8)

As this continued Castro was engineering a brilliant

propaganda campaign aimed at accusing the U.S. of "conspiring

with the counter revolutionaries against the Castro regime"(9).

Castro's ability to whip the masses into a frenzy with wispy

fallacies about American "imperialist" actions against Cuba was

his main asset. He constantly found events which he could work

the "ol Castro magic " on, as Nixon said , to turn it into

another of the long list of grievances, real or imagined, that

Cuba had suffered.

Throughout Castro's rule there had been numerous minor

attacks and disturbances in Cuba. Always without any

investigation whatsoever, Castro would blatantly and publicly

blame the U.S..

Castro continually called for hearings at the Organization

of American States and the United Nations to hear charges

against the U.S. of "overt aggression". These charges were

always denied by the councils. (10)

Two events that provided fuel for the Castro propaganda

furnace stand out. These are the "bombing" of Havana on

October 21 and the explosion of the French munitions ship La

Coubre on March 4, 1960.(11)

On the evening of October 21 the former captain of the

rebel air force, Captain Dian-Lanz, flew over Havana and

dropped a quantity of virulently anti-Castro leaflets. This was

an American failure to prevent international flights in

violation of American law. Untroubled by any considerations of

truth or good faith, the Cuban authorities distorted the

facts of the matter and accused the U.S. of a responsibility

going way beyond negligence. Castro, not two days later,

elaborated a bombing thesis, complete with "witnesses", and

launched a propaganda campaign against the U.S. Ambassador

Bonsal said, "This incident was so welcome to Castro for his

purposes that I was not surprised when, at a later date, a

somewhat similar flight was actually engineered by Cuban secret

agents in Florida."(12)

This outburst constituted "the beginning of the end " in

U.S.- Cuban relations. President Eisenhower stated ,"Castro's

performance on October 26 on the "bombing" of Havana spelled

the end of my hope for rational relations between Cuba and the

U.S."(13)

Up until 1960 the U.S. had followed a policy of non

intervention in Cuba. It had endured the slander and seizure

of lands, still hoping to maintain relations. This ended,

when, on March 4, the French munitions ship La Coubre arrived

at Havana laden with arms and munitions for the Cuban

government. It promptly blew up with serious loss of life. (14)

Castro and his authorities wasted no time venomously

denouncing the U.S. for an overt act of sabotage. Some

observers concluded that the disaster was due to the careless

way the Cubans unloaded the cargo. (15) Sabotage was possible

but it was preposterous to blame the U.S. without even a

pretense of an investigation.

Castro's reaction to the La Coubre explosion may have been

what tipped the scales in favor of Washington's abandonment of

the non intervention policy. This, the continued slander, and

the fact that the Embassy had had no reply from the Cuban

government to its representations regarding the cases of

Americans victimized by the continuing abuses of the INRA.

The American posture of moderation was beginning to become,

in the face of Castro's insulting and aggressive behavior, a

political liability. (16)

The new American policy, not announced as such, but

implicit in the the actions of the United States government was

one of overthrowing Castro by all means available to the U.S.

short of open employment of American armed forces in Cuba.

It was at this time that the controversial decision was

taken to allow the CIA to begin recruiting and training of

ex-Cuban exiles for anti-Castro military service. (17)

Shortly after this decision, following in quick steps,

aggressive policies both on the side of Cuba and the U.S. led

to the eventual finale in the actual invasion of Cuba by the

U.S!

In June 1960 the U.S. started a series of economic

aggressions toward Cuba aimed at accelerating their downfall.

The first of these measures was the advice of the U.S. to

the oil refineries in Cuba to refuse to handle the crude

petroleum that the Cubans were receiving from the Soviet Union.

The companies such as Shell and Standard Oil had been buying

crude from their own plants in Venezuela at a high cost. The

Cuban government demanded that the refineries process the crude

they were receiving from Russia at a much cheaper price. These

refineries refused at the U.S. advice stating that there were

no provisions in the law saying that they must accept the

Soviet product and that the low grade Russian crude would

damage the machinery. The claim about the law may have been

true but the charge that the cheaper Soviet

crude damaging the

machines seems to be an excuse to cover up the attempted

economic strangulation of Cuba. (The crude worked just fine as

is soon to be shown)

Upon receiving the refusal Che Gueverra, the newly

appointed head of the National Bank,and known anti-American,

seized all three major oil company refineries and began

producing all the Soviet crude,not just the 50% they had

earlier bargained for. This was a big victory and a stepping

stone towards increasing the soon to be controversial alliance

with Russia.

On July 6, a week after the intervention of the refineries,

President Eisenhower announced that the balance of Cuba's 1960

sugar quota for the supply of sugar to the U.S. was to be

suspended. (18). This action was regarded as a reprisal to

the intervention of the refineries. It seems obvious that it

was a major element in the calculated overthrow of Castro.

In addition to being an act of destroying the U.S. record

for statesmanship in Latin America, this forced Cuba into

Russia's arms and vice-versa.

The immediate loss to Cuba was 900,000 tons of sugar

unsold. This was valued at about $100,000,000.(19) Had the

Russians not come to the rescue it would have been a serious

blow to Cuba. But come to the rescue they did, cementing the

Soviet-Cuban bond and granting Castro a present he could have

never given himself. As Ernest Hemingway put it,"I just hope to

Christ that the United States doesn't cut the sugar quota. That

will really tear it. It will make Cuba a gift to the

Russians." (20) And now the gift had been made.

Castro had announced earlier in a speech that action

against the sugar quota would cost Americans in Cuba "down to

the nails in their shoes" (21) Castro did his best to carry

that out. In a decree made as the Law of Nationalization, he

authorized expropriation of American property at Che Gueverra's

discretion. The compensation scheme was such that under

current U.S. - Cuban trade relations it was worthless and

therefore confiscation without compensation.

The Soviet Unions assumption of responsibility of Cuba's

economic welfare gave the Russians a politico-military stake in

Cuba. Increased arms shipments from the U.S.S.R and

Czechoslovakia enabled Castro to rapidly strengthen and expand

his forces. On top of this Cuba now had Russian military

support. On July 9, three days after President Eisenhowers

sugar proclamation, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev announced,

"The U.S.S.R is raising its voice and extending a helpful hand

to the people of Cuba.....Speaking figuratively in case of

necessity Soviet artillerymen can support the Cuban people with

rocket fire. (22) Castro took this to mean direct commitment

made by Russia to protect the Cuban revolution in case of U.S.

attack. The final act of the U.S. in the field of economic

aggression against Cuba came on October 19, 1960, in the form

of a trade embargo on all goods except medicine and medical

supplies. Even these were to be banned within a few months.

Other than causing the revolutionaries some inconvenience, all

the embargo accomplished was to give Castro a godsend. For the

past 25 years Castro has blamed the shortages, rationings,

breakdowns and even some of the unfavorable weather conditions

on the U.S. blockade.

On January 6, 1961, Castro formally broke relations with

the United States and ordered the staff of the U.S. embassy to

leave. Immediately after the break in relations he ordered

full scale mobilization of his armed forces to repel an

invasion from the United States, which he correctly asserted

was imminent. For at this time the Washington administration,

under new President-elect Kennedy was gearing up for the Cuban

exile invasion of Cuba. The fact that this secret was ill kept

led to increased arms being shipped to Cuba by Russia in late

1960.

President Kennedy inherited from the Eisenhower-Nixon

administration the operation that became the Bay of Pigs

expedition. The plan was ill conceived and a fiasco.

Both Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger describe the

President as the victim of a process set in motion before his

inauguration and which he, in the first few weeks of his

administration, was unable to arrest in spite of his

misgivings. Mr. Schlesinger writes -"Kennedy saw the project

in the patios of the bureaucracy as a contingency plan. He did

not yet realize how contingency planning could generate its own

reality." (23)

The fact is that Kennedy had promised to pursue a more

successful policy towards Cuba. I fail to see how the proposed

invasion could be looked upon as successful. The plan he

inherited called for 1500 patriots to seize control over their

seven million fellow citizens from over 100,000 well trained,

well armed Castroite militia!

As if the plan wasn't doomed from the start, the

information the CIA had gathered about the strength of the

uprising in Cuba was outrageously misleading. If we had won,

it still would have taken prolonged U.S. intervention to make

it work. This along with Kennedys decision to rule out

American forces or even American officers or experts, whose

participation was planned, doomed the whole affair.

Additionally these impromptu ground rules were not relayed

to the exiles by the CIA, who were expecting massive U.S.

military backing!

The exiles had their own problems; guns didn't work, ships

sank, codes for communication were wrong, the ammunition was

the wrong kind - everything that could go wrong, did. As could

be imagined the anti-Castro opposition achieved not one of its

permanent goals. Upon landing at the Bay of Pigs on April 17,

1961, the mission marked a landmark failure in U.S. foreign

politics. By April 20, only three days later, Castro's forces

had completely destroyed any semblance of the mission: they

killed 300 and captured the remaining 1,200!

Many people since then have chastised Kennedy for his

decision to pull U.S. military forces. I feel that his only

mistake was in going ahead in the first place, although, as

stated earlier, it seems as if he may not have had much choice.

I feel Kennedy showed surer instincts in this matter than

his advisors who pleaded with him not to pull U.S. forces. For

if the expedition had succeeded due to American armed forces

rather than the strength of the exile forces and the anti-

Castro movement within Cuba, the post Castro government would

have been totally unviable: it would have taken constant

American help to shore it up. In this matter I share the

opinion of `ambassador Ellis O. Briggs, who has written "The

Bay of Pigs operation was a tragic experience for the Cubans

who took part, but its failure was a fortunate (if mortifying)

experience for the U.S., which otherwise might have been

saddled with indefinite occupation of the island.

Beyond its immediately damaging effects, the Bay of Pigs

fiasco has shown itself to have far reaching consequences.

Washington's failure to achieve its goal in Cuba provided

the catalyst for Russia to seek an advantage and install

nuclear missiles in Cuba. The resulting "missile crisis" in

1962 was the closest we have been to thermonuclear war.

America's gain may have been America's loss. A successful

Bay of Pigs may have brought the United States one advantage.

The strain on American political and military assets resulting

from the need to keep the lid on in Cuba might have lid on Cuba

might have led the President of the United States to resist,

rather than to enthusiastically embrace, the advice he received

in 1964 and 1965 to make a massive commitment of American air

power, ground forces, and prestige in Vietnam.

Cuban troops have been a major presence as Soviet

surrogates all over the world, notably in Angola.

The threat of exportation of Castro's revolution permeates

U.S.-Central and South American policy. (Witness the invasion

of Grenada.)

This fear still dominates todays headlines. For years the

U.S. has urged support for government of El Salvador and the

right wing Contras in Nicaragua. The major concern underlying

American policy in the area is Castro's influence. The fear of

a Castro influenced regime in South and Central America had

such control of American foreign policy as to almost topple the

Presidency in the recent Iran - Contra affair. As a result the

U.S. government has once again faced a crisis which threatens

to destroy its credibility in foreign affairs. All because of

one man with a cigar.

In concluding I would like to state my own feelings on the

whole affair as they formed in researching the topic. To

start, all the information I could gather was one-sided. All

the sources were American written, and encompassed an American

point of view. In light of this knowledge, and with the

advantage of hindsight, I have formulated my own opinion of

this affair and how it might have been more productively

handled. American intervention should have been held to a

minimum. In an atmosphere of concentration on purely Cuban

issues, opposition to Castro's personal dictatorship could be

expected to grow. Admittedly, even justified American

retaliation would have led to Cuban counterretaliation and so

on with the prospect that step by step the same end result

would have been attained as was in fact achieved. But the

process would have lasted far longer; measured American

responses might have appeared well deserved to an increasing

number of Cubans, thus strengthening Cuban opposition to the

regime instead of, as was the case, greatly stimulating

revolutionary fervor, leaving the Russians no choice but to

give massive support to the Revolution and fortifying the

belief among anti-Castro Cubans that the United States was

rapidly moving to liberate them. The economic pressures

available to the United States were not apt to bring Castro to

his knees, since the Soviets were capable of meeting Cuban

requirements in such matters as oil and sugar. I believe the

Cuban government would have been doomed by its own

disorganization and incompetence and by the growing

disaffection of an increasing number of the Cuban people. Left

to its own devices, the Castro regime would have withered on

the vine.

ammunition was

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